Remember that one day when you could wake up without an alarm? When you would get your favorite bowl of cereal and sit between the hours of 8 and 12? This is a blog dedicated to the greatest time of our childhood: Saturday mornings. The television programs you watched, the memories attached to them, and maybe introducing you to something you didn't realize existed. Updated every weekend.

Disney first toyed with the idea of
adapting The Little Mermaid as part
of a package film featuring vignettes of various Andersen tales. Development on
the film began shortly after work was completed on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but it ended up becoming abandoned
in favor of another Andersen tale: The Ugly Duckling. In
1985, Ron Clements,
instructed to find new story ideas for Disney’s
next animated released, had discovered the fairy tale while browsing through a
bookstore and presented a treatment to then-Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg. Katzenberg
initially passed on the idea, feeling it was too similar to the in-development
television film Splash, Too, but
changed his mind the next day; feeling that after Disney’s recent lackluster
movies and the fact they hadn’t introduced a new princess since 1959, The Little Mermaid offered up some new
possibilities.

Concept art of the Sea Witch and the Little Mermaid.

Clements and John Musker expanded Clements’
initial idea, eliminating the Mermaid’s grandmother as a character and giving a
larger role to her father and the evil Sea Witch. Development was stalled for a
time as the studio focused their attention on Who Framed Roger
Rabbitand Oliver & Company. When
it resumed, songwriter Howard Ashman
became involved and suggested changing the minor character of Clarence, an
English-butler crab, into a Jamaican and shifting the musical style to match.
Katzenberg, Clements, Musker and Ashman revised the story to become a musical,
and Ashman teamed-up with Alan Menken
to score the film.

Sebastian watches as Ariel resuscitates the prince.

The
Little Mermaid was marked as Disney’s next major release,
and the most animation resources of any Disney film in decades was dedicated
towards its production. The underwater setting alone required a tremendous
amount of special effects not seen since Fantasiain 1940. It
was also the first Disney film in years to use live actors as references for
character motions; with Sherri
Stoner and Joshua Finkel
standing in for the leads in key scenes with recorded audio playback guiding
them. It would also be the last Disney film to use traditionally hand-painted
cels, the multiplane camera, and many of the standard optical effects as
computers began to play a greater role in film production.

Ariel and Flounder study her latest human artifact.

While the heroine was based on the
original fairytale character, Clements deemed her too tragic and essentially
created an all-new one in Ariel. Jodi Benson, traditionally a stage actress,
was cast in the role because Clements and Musker felt it important that the
same person could also perform the songs. Ariel was designed by Glen Keane who used a combination
of his wife, rising young star Alyssa Milano,
and Stoner. Footage of astronaut Sally
Ride in space provided inspiration for the movement of Ariel’s hair
underwater, as did submerging Stoner in a pool. Ariel’s red hair was disputed
against by executives who wanted her to be blonde, but the filmmakers fought
for it on the basis that it was easier to darken with shading than yellow,
better contrasted with her tail (which was a special green they created and
named “ariel”), and that they already had a blonde mermaid in Splash.

Scuttle gives Ariel a fork and incorrectly explains its use.

Newly created for the film version was the
aforementioned crab, Sebastian (Samuel E. Wright), who served as the royal
adviser and composer; Ariel’s best friend, tropical fish Flounder (Jason Marin);
seagull Scuttle (Buddy
Hackett), who shared his (often incorrect) knowledge about
the human world with Ariel, as well as the nature of the human artifacts she
collected; and the Sea Witch’s eel minions, Flotsam and Jetsam (both Paddi Edwards).

The Little Mermaid opened in theaters on
November 17, 1989. Like the fairytale on which it was based, it centered on
mermaid princess Ariel of the undersea kingdom of Atlantica who had a strong
interest in the world above the sea. However, her father, King Triton (Kenneth
Mars), forbade interaction between the worlds. That became impossible when she
went to the surface and rescued Prince Eric (Christopher Daniel Barnes) whose
ship was destroyed, falling in love with him in the process. The sea witch,
Ursula (designed after drag queen Divine,
voiced by Pat Carroll),
tricked Ariel into making a deal to exchange her voice for legs with the
stipulation she must get Eric’s “kiss of true love” to remain human, or else
she becomes Ursula’s property forever. To hedge her bets, Ursula transformed
herself into a beautiful woman with Ariel’s voice and hypnotized Eric into marrying
her. After an exchange of Triton and Eric attacking and defeating Ursula,
Triton relented and let Ariel stay with Eric as a human and they were finally
married.

Initially,
Katzenberg felt that the “girl’s film” would make less at the box office than Oliver & Company, but after it was
completed he changed his tune and predicted it would be the first animated
feature to make over $100 million. In reality, the film grossed over $84
million, short of Katzenberg’s revised prediction but significantly more than Oliver. In an atypical move for Disney,
they released the film to home video just six months after its release. The
company had a successful practice of re-releasing their films to theaters every
seven years and feared home media would take away from the box office. The Little Mermaid became the
top-selling title of the year, selling over 7 million copies in the first
month. Disney would begin releasing their films soon after their theatrical
runs rather than delaying them for years. Mermaid
also marked the beginning of the Disney Renaissance; a period from
1989-1999 where Walt Disney Feature
Animation experienced a creative resurgence in adapting well-known stories
that restored interest in Disney.

Ariel and Flounder meet Spot.

Shortly
before the film hit stores, Disney planned to capitalize on its success with a
show developed for The Disney
Channel. The Little Mermaid’s Island,
the show’s proposed title, would have featured puppets from Jim Henson’s Creature Shop interacting with
a live actress as Ariel. The video sales caused Disney to quietly drop these
plans in favor of an animated weekly series for CBS.
They tapped Jamie Mitchell,
who had previously worked on Walt
Disney Television Animation’s successful Adventures
of the Gummi Bearsseries, to helm the series while Patsy Cameron and Tedd Anasti, who had worked on DuckTales, served as
the story editors and part of the writing stable, and the primary writers for
seasons 2 and 3. Veteran writer Chuck
Menville contributed two scripts to the first season shortly before his
death in 1992. One of his episodes, “Thingamajigger,” was dedicated to his
memory.

Disney’s The Little Mermaid chose to
serve as a prequel to the movie; focusing on Ariel’s adventures under the sea.
Reprising their roles from the film would be Benson as Ariel, Wright as
Sebastian, Mars as Triton, Carroll as Ursula, Edwards as Flotsam and Jetsam,
and Kimmy Robertson as
Ariel’s sister, Alana; with Edan Gross coming on for Flounder the first season
and Bradley Pierce for seasons 2 and 3, Maurice LaMarche as Scuttle in
season 3, and Jeff Bennet as
Prince Eric for several guest appearances. Ariel’s five other sisters also
appeared, but where they were all voiced by Robertson and Caroline Vasicek, respectively,
each was given a unique voice actress: Sherry Lynn as Adella, Cathy Cavadini as Andrina, Mona Marshall as Aquata, Mary Kay Bergman as Arista, and Kath Soucie as Attina.

The Evil Manta.

Newly
created for the series was orphaned merboy Urchin (Danny Cooksey), a friend of
Ariel’s who joined her on some adventures; Gabriella, a deaf mermaid who
communicated through sign language and with interpretations by octopus friend,
Ollie (Gabriel Damon);
fun-loving mermaid Pearl (Cree
Summer); and Spot, an orca calf Ariel helps raise before reuniting him with
his family. While Ursula made a few appearances in the show, a new threat was
created called The Evil Manta (Tim
Curry). Manta sought to destroy Atlantica and was accidentally freed from
his centuries-long imprisonment in an undersea volcano by Ariel. Hans Christian
Andersen (Mark Hamill) also
appeared once, needing rescue by Ariel when his submarine ends up stranded and
leaking.

Disney’s The Little Mermaid made its
unofficial debut on September 11, 1992 with a half-hour primetime special: The Little Mermaid: A Whale of a Tale, written
by science-fiction author Peter S. Beagle. Although made by the same group of
people and the new character of Spot would appear later on, the special wasn’t
considered an official part of the show by Disney as it was made under a
separate contract from CBS. The series proper began the next morning,
immediately following the debut of fellow film adaptation Fievel’s
American Tails. Because the show was the first directly based off of a
Disney animated feature and one of the few cartoons to star a strong female
character, it received a wide array of media attention. However, not everyone
was pleased with the show; some of the animators who worked on the film
complained both publicly and anonymously about the show; feeling the television
division should come up with their own ideas.

Ursula, Flotsam and Jetsam.

The
series was renewed for two additional seasons; its third spent as the lead-in
for the next Disney film-based series, Aladdin.
Sebastian was also featured in a segment of Marsupilamiduring the second season; however, those segments were set after the film
and had no relation to the Mermaid series.
CBS elected not to renew the show again, and the final episode aired in
November of 1994. The following year, The Disney Channel began rerunning the
series seven days a week, and then once a day on both it and Toon Disney until 2010.
The series again aired on Disney
Junior from the channel’s launch in 2012 until 2014.

Ariel has
become a permanent part of Disney’s
princess pantheon; being featured in various media and merchandising as
well as being represented at various Disney locations. But, her story didn’t
end there. When Disney began making direct-to-video sequels to their biggest
theatrical hits, Ariel was on the receiving end with The Little Mermaid
II: Return to the Seain 2000. It featured Ursula’s sister, Morgana
(Carroll), looking for revenge on the royal family of Atlantica through Ariel
and Eric’s daughter, Melody (Tara
Strong). In 2008, a prequel film, Ariel’s
Beginning, completely ignored the events of the television series and
showed Ariel’s first meeting with Flounder (Parker Goris), as well as the
restoration of music to the kingdom after Triton (Jim Cummings) blamed it for her
mother’s death.

EPISODE GUIDE:

Season 1:

“What
of a Tale” (9/11/92) – Ariel befriends a baby Orca that was sent away from his
family to save him from poachers.

“The
Great Sebastian” (9/12/92) – Sebastian convinces the king to allow him to
negotiate with the Sharkanians, whom he’s deathly afraid of.

“Stormy”
(9/19/92) – Ariel rides a wild seahorse and ends up lost in the wilderness.

“Urchin”
(9/26/92) – Ariel befriends an orphaned merboy who has become a member of the
Lobster Monster’s gang.